Tag: Ben Whishaw

The Lobster

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos envisions a dystopian future in a satire about modern romance.

TheLobsterPosterIf you could be transformed into any animal, which would it be? It sounds like a bad question on a dating website, and yet we’ve become more reliant on such quirks in defining relationships and romance. Colin Farrell chooses to be the title animal in “The Lobster,” an absurdist satire that uses a hilariously bizarre, futuristic premise to lampoon the idea of modern love.

Director Yorgos Lanthimos, the Greek director behind “Dogtooth” now working in the English language, imagines a future in which it’s a law to have a romantic partner. Those without one, like David (Farrell) after recently becoming a widower, are sent to an upscale resort hotel and given 45 days to find a match or be transformed into an animal of their choice.

Lanthimos has some fun in subtly revealing the details of this premise, and the film’s deadpan style slowly works its way from raised-eyebrow peculiarities to laugh-out-loud moments of uneasy humor. For instance, David casually drops the detail that his dog is actually his brother who didn’t “make it.” When he arrives at the hotel, his choice to become a lobster has more to do with survival than preference. He envisions a long life span, an ability to swim and an easier chance at mating, and we wonder if David’s not actually trying to make it as a human any longer but simply waiting out the clock.

The details get stranger. Periodically the hotel guests are required to participate in a hunt for “loners,” single people who have rejected the rules of society and now live in the forest. Bagging one nabs you an extra day, and some hotel guests have spent years here as a result. Lanthimos stages these hunts like graceful slow-motion sequences in a Michael Mann film, stylized, operatic and wholly absurd. Guests are also tethered through their belt loops and restricted from masturbating; one who breaks the rule (John C. Reilly) gets his hand shoved in a toaster during breakfast. And only those who share similar characteristics to each other can become couples. One young girl (Jessica Barden) touts that she gets sporadic nosebleeds. David might be interested, but his trait is that he’s shortsighted, so no match.

“The Lobster” works great as a dystopian comedy (without explanation, random elephants or flamingos can be spotted in the background), but it helps that these oddities have parallels to dating in 2016. We give too much weight to superficial character traits, we go to great lengths to remain in love, we assign unnecessary rules and norms on society, and we shun those who can’t find a significant other. Lanthimos approaches these themes with ironic levity, like when the hotel’s manager informs an aspiring couple, “If you cannot solve any problems yourselves, you will be assigned children,” or with shocking poignancy, like the line, “A relationship can’t be built on a lie,” after it’s revealed one member of a couple faked a similar character trait.

Of course we know love is never defined by strict rules. Lanthimos’s deadpan tone, with every character delivering their lines in matter-of-fact, staccato notes (not to mention a score that’s equally terse and arresting), underscores the need to dismantle what he sees as ludicrous institutions.

Love however is something of an act of survival. For as comically bleak as “The Lobster” can be, the romance formed between Farrell and another loner played by Rachel Weisz reaches touching heights. Lanthimos asks if it’s harder to pretend you have feelings or that you don’t, and there’s a push-and-pull between this film’s harder exterior and softer inside. It’s a perfect match.

4 stars

Suffragette

Sarah Gavron directs the period drama of women in 1912 London campaigning for the right to vote.

suffragette-2015-movie-posterSarah Gavron’s “Suffragette” is most relevant today as a piece of historical fiction because issues of women’s rights are in 2015 as prevalent and significant as they were in 1912 London. It’s the slightly fictionalized story of English working women who took up civil disobedience in order to pressure the government to give women the vote.

Should women be allowed to vote? Of course. The answer is so obvious that even the film provides scant arguments against it. “Suffragette” could better advance the discussion of women’s rights in 2015 if it had more to say regarding the debate and nuances of women’s rights issues in 1912. “Suffragette” is more a soapbox than a profound piece of modern feminism. And while it has strong performances and competent filmmaking, it’s even lacking as a stirring piece of dramatic historical fiction.

Carey Mulligan is excellent (although what else is new) as Maud Watts, an uneducated mother working in the laundry trade in London. She happens across her colleague Violet Miller (Anne-Marie Duff) smashing West End windows while calling for the vote for women, and she’s reluctantly pulled into the fray. Maud testifies at a parliamentary hearing in place of Violet regarding the pitiful working conditions at the laundry, and the police associate Maud with the other suffragettes (including Helena Bonham Carter and a rapid cameo from Meryl Streep), which is a different term from the non-violent suffragists.

It isn’t long before Maud comes around to the cause, despite how it estranges her from her husband Sonny (Ben Whishaw) and her young son. Sonny is a character who isn’t as monstrous as some of the other male figures in the film, who range from having severe male-gaze/ownership issues to being flat out sexual abusers, but Sonny isn’t quite sympathetic to the cause either. The only meaningful male character with principles of any sort is the police officer played by Brendan Gleeson. He unblinkingly and calmly reasons with Maud that no one cares for her or her activism, and that she’s only being used as a pawn. From Gleeson, the scene hits heavy, and he passively upholds the law without politics in mind and even calls attention to the barbaric treatment of female prisoners later in the film.

“Suffragette” stands out from the crop of most Hollywood movies simply as an example of fiction, historical or otherwise, that allow this many women on screen at once. We see them plotting attacks and even running away from explosions. “Suffragette” even takes on something of a caper vibe, but it lacks a strong sense of suspense to carry along the action. Gavron resorts instead to a lot of shaky cam, naturalistic filmmaking that doesn’t go the distance in terms of creating mood.

During the closing credits, Gavron closes “Suffragette” with a roll of major countries and the year in which they gave women the right to vote, ending with Saudi Arabia promising women the right this year. There is still work to be done, and if nothing else, “Suffragette” is still a rousing story capable of getting more and more women to speak up.

3 stars

Skyfall

After a 50 year run, “Skyfall” is the best James Bond movie in years, if not the best ever made. It is the first that has made us ask about Bond’s past and future and the first to make us realize the game has changed but that we’d be nowhere without him.

Sam Mendes picks up the franchise after the unfortunate hiccup that was “Quantum of Solace,” a movie that made Bond into a forgettable Jason Bourne. What he brings to the table is style mixed with the silly and substance mixed with the smarm. It’s a Bond movie as ludicrous and fun as the previous but going beyond the grittily realistic norm established by “Casino Royale.”

Its magnificent opening motorcycle chase along rooftops has Bond (Daniel Craig) pursuing a man who has stolen a hard drive containing the identities of all the MI6 operatives. The two leap onto a moving train upon which Bond tears off the back end of a trolley with a bulldozer and leaps aboard, adjusting his suit ever so justly as he does. As they fight, M (Judi Dench) orders her other agent Eve (Naomi Harris) to take a risky sniper shot that hits Bond instead of the target.

Presumed dead, Bond spends the next few years off the map “enjoying death,” going through the motions of a freewheeling lifestyle with cold detachment. It’s only when a cyber terrorist attack against MI6 hits that Bond decides to return. His new target is Silva (Javier Bardem), a former computer hacker for MI6 with a vendetta against M. His presence tests whether Bond or M are both fit for duty, allowing us to finally reach these characters on an emotional level without sacrificing Craig’s biting wit or Dench’s spitfire attitude.

If there’s one thing to notice about “Skyfall,” it’s that Bond has never looked better. Director of Photography Roger Deakins, a man with nine Oscar nominations and still no victory, is possibly the best cinematographer alive today. He’s made a recent shift from film to digital, and he has taken the dark shadows and sharp colors usually found in a David Fincher movie and applied it to the classical look of 007. In one early fight scene in Shanghai, he blends space, depth and color to create a beautiful battle of silhouettes that looks as good as anything I’ve seen this year. And later when the film takes us to a deserted villa on the Scottish countryside, the unreal lighting and deep focus of Javier Bardem illuminated in front of a burning building holds up as instantly iconic. It’s a drop-dead gorgeous movie that just makes the whole experience ignite.

This blending of aesthetics matches the high psychological stakes Mendes is imposing. If “Skyfall” had forgotten to be an action movie first, the super serious talk about whether the world still needs Bond might get as tiresome as a discussion about sending Grandma to a nursing home. But screenwriter John Logan establishes a high-tech cyber scheme that still finds ways for Bond to be practically and physically intuitive. The computer hacker one step ahead of the good guys is ground well tread by other recent action movies, but never Bond. Somehow he fits in as smoothly as though he were still at the poker table.

Much has already been said about Judi Dench finally giving a hefty performance as M that befits her talents, but I’m more interested in the juicy work by Bardem. Most Bond villains have a physical disability designed to distinguish them, but Bardem makes do on his snakelike sexuality that in a delicious scene briefly tests Bond’s own. His presumed homosexuality is in its own way another mixed bag of political incorrectness, but in screen villainy terms it’s the absolute tops.

Mendes takes great pains to treat such a terrific villain with stealthy patience. The moment in which Silva is introduced is a wonderful long take that watches Bardem slowly saunter up to Bond as he tells a story about how catch rats. In wide shots, striking composition and a steady hand, Mendes provides style and flair uncommon to the gritty realism of contemporary action pictures.

“Skyfall” really is Bond reinvented. It takes the uncouth, rugged James Bond newly discovered in “Casino Royale” and molds him into a man with depth and class. “Youth does not guarantee innovation,” as Bond says in one scene to Q, and as one of the finest movies of the year, it’s clear this 50 year old franchise feels as good as new.

4 stars

Cloud Atlas

“Cloud Atlas” opens with an old man muttering under his breath, talking about the juju o’ the bayou, or at least that’s what it sounds like. It’s a super close-up after looking down from the stars, so it feels a little profound, a little silly, a little captivating. Then you realize it’s Tom Hanks with really good makeup, and you realize very quickly this movie is bananas.

“Cloud Atlas” is a wild mess of a movie. It tells six stories over countless centuries, sharing actors and thematic structure, but only just barely narrative. So at times the whole thing is pegged to be philosophical and thought provoking, and then Jim Broadbent learns to drive an SUV and runs over Hugo Weaving wearing drag as they escape from a nursing home.

Whether or not it’s actually about anything is beside the point. It has the same transcendent, sci-fi possibilities and mumbo-jumbo that “The Matrix” did, which was also directed by Andy and Lana Wachowski (the siblings have paired up with “Run Lola Run” director Tom Tykwer), but at the end of the day it’s a fun journey through time with just as much visual imagination.

Describing how the plot functions is an effort in futility, but the movie itself actually does it best. “Each thing is understood moment to moment, but at any moment it could be headed in a different direction.” This may just be the movie accounting for its own jumbled narrative, but that is how “Cloud Atlas” feels. It flits in time, but none of it is particularly dreamlike or even surreal. Each of the six stories, if you broke them apart as they are, are presented linearly.

The only confusing part is the excessive crosscutting that the Wachowskis and Tykwer employ. They may jump from a barbarian attack scene in the dystopian future to the performance of a sonata in 1932 to a sex scene in the 22nd Century to a sight gag or punch line in modern day London. The brilliant thing is that they’re often edited as though they are one scene, completely different in terms of even the mood we’re supposed to feel, but fluid in their pacing and action. At one point when Halle Berry crashes her car off a bridge and plummets into the water, the movie leaves her hanging for nearly 20 minutes before we see her making her escape. To have it happen when it does, a theme of rescue seems to permeate throughout all the other story threads.

“Cloud Atlas” is all about its themes rather than concrete ideas. We start with each character sharing in an unlikely encounter. We see them experience feelings of escape, rescue and discovery, and before long they’ve all suffered loss and hardship, if not action. Voice over narrations, the image of a comet shaped birthmark and miniature Easter eggs connecting the stories suggest that our lives are not our own, that our spirits carry through generations, but because the stories never truly intersect, do they mean anything beyond wispy ideas?

I don’t think it matters much, because the movie’s lushness sweeps us up in its visuals and ideas. We see futuristic cityscapes, treacherous mountain ranges, majestic long shots on the high sea and colorful rooms that materialize with possibilities right before our eyes.

On a technical level alone, “Cloud Atlas” is a remarkable achievement. The running time is nearly three hours, but because the stories are so out of sequence we’re not checking our watch awaiting the next one to start. We’re mystified by the makeup that makes Tom Hanks, Hugo Weaving and Hugh Grant at times unrecognizable. We’re moved by the complex and exuberant performances of Jim Broadbent and Doona Bae, a South Korean actress who fully owns a rare lead part for Asians in a big budget movie.

Something that was more art house would also be more metaphorical in its ideas and imagery. The Wachowskis and Tykwer however put all their brainstorming right into the mouths of their characters. So moment to moment we get a line that resonates on an intellectual level, another that comes from a crazed Mad Hatter and seems laughable and another that is intentionally laughable. These ideas would be a slog if it jammed them down our throats, but perhaps like the way the filmmakers think the world operates, these possibilities are released like spirits floating in the movie’s universe.

I imagine I’ll see “Cloud Atlas” again very shortly, not because it’s a dense movie that needs to be unraveled, but because it’s a magical movie that makes it fun to be insightful.

3 ½ stars